Budget fairing / plastic repair

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Budget fairing / plastic repair

Postby NVA250 » Wed Jan 10, 2018 4:23 pm

I know that there are few plastic parts on the older MZs but this might also work on metal. Mods, please feel free to move if I have placed this in the wrong category.

I recently had a very slow speed fall off my year 2000 Yamaha Fazer 600. Fortunately there wasn’t much damage, other than the front fairing which was cracked in a number of places and had the indicator mount punched out.

Image

It’s a shame because it was in really good shape for an 18 year old bike! Being that old it is near impossible to find a replacement part and it would be prohibitively expensive even if I did find one. There was no other choice but to fix it myself…

Image

I wanted to do something a little bit better looking and permanent than zip ties or melting the edges together with a hot screwdriver. Firstly I ground down the edges of all of the cracks and broken parts using a dremel rotary grinder. This was to create a decent gap to fill with Araldite (epoxy resin) but it also had the effect of melting the parts together.

The next stage was to fill the gaps with Araldite and leave it overnight to set. Just gluing the parts together was not going to be very strong as the ABS plastic that the fairing is made from is rather brittle. In order to reinforce the fairing I cut up some tumble dryer sheets as a cheap alternative to glass fibre. There were thoroughly soaked in Araldite and again left to dry overnight.

Image
Image
Image

The whole lot set really well and is very strong. I couldn’t quite get the right fit when gluing the parts and cracks, so the final part of the process was to use P.38 car filler to level it all off. The final finish isn’t perfect, you can still see a few dints, but it’ll do for now.

Image

I couldn’t be bothered to have the whole fairing resprayed so for the time being it was just primed and put back on the bike. The whole process probably took 4 or 5 hours spread over a few days.

Image
Image

I had most of the parts to do this on the shelf already but I reckon that the total cost of the parts is around £10 (Araldite, filler and tumble dryer cloths). Not bad considering that a second hand fairing in worse condition would cost around £150!
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Re: Budget fairing / plastic repair

Postby Blurredman » Thu Jan 11, 2018 3:23 am

Well done. Looks good! :-) :-)
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1987 MZ ETZ300 - 38,000 miles - Sun :)
1990 MZ ETZ251 - 49,000 miles - Commute :)

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Re: Budget fairing / plastic repair

Postby Uncle Nick » Thu Jan 18, 2018 12:14 pm

I love these cheap fixes that are as good, if not better, than the expensive option.

I once used Araldite to fix a cracked coil that shorted out when it rained. Must be 15-20 years ago and still going strong! :D
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Re: Budget fairing / plastic repair

Postby tigcraft » Sun Jan 28, 2018 1:34 pm

NVA250 wrote:I know that there are few plastic parts on the older MZs but this might also work on metal. Mods, please feel free to move if I have placed this in the wrong category.

I recently had a very slow speed fall off my year 2000 Yamaha Fazer 600. Fortunately there wasn’t much damage, other than the front fairing which was cracked in a number of places and had the indicator mount punched out.

Image

It’s a shame because it was in really good shape for an 18 year old bike! Being that old it is near impossible to find a replacement part and it would be prohibitively expensive even if I did find one. There was no other choice but to fix it myself…

Image

I wanted to do something a little bit better looking and permanent than zip ties or melting the edges together with a hot screwdriver. Firstly I ground down the edges of all of the cracks and broken parts using a dremel rotary grinder. This was to create a decent gap to fill with Araldite (epoxy resin) but it also had the effect of melting the parts together.

The next stage was to fill the gaps with Araldite and leave it overnight to set. Just gluing the parts together was not going to be very strong as the ABS plastic that the fairing is made from is rather brittle. In order to reinforce the fairing I cut up some tumble dryer sheets as a cheap alternative to glass fibre. There were thoroughly soaked in Araldite and again left to dry overnight.

Image
Image
Image

The whole lot set really well and is very strong. I couldn’t quite get the right fit when gluing the parts and cracks, so the final part of the process was to use P.38 car filler to level it all off. The final finish isn’t perfect, you can still see a few dints, but it’ll do for now.

Image

I couldn’t be bothered to have the whole fairing resprayed so for the time being it was just primed and put back on the bike. The whole process probably took 4 or 5 hours spread over a few days.

Image
Image

I had most of the parts to do this on the shelf already but I reckon that the total cost of the parts is around £10 (Araldite, filler and tumble dryer cloths). Not bad considering that a second hand fairing in worse condition would cost around £150!

You’ve done a very nice clean repair, I’ve done many over the years for other riders, similar idea although a slightly stronger approach but same principle.
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